Content Marketing 101: Creating High-Quality Content for 2019

What is high-quality content? High quality content is not just synonymous with long content. Posts of 1,000+ words do show your visitors that you’ve invested in your topic. However, it doesn’t always mean that your content is the best it can be. High-quality content is content that is valuable. This means that it will add value in the form of information or insight to the consumer’s life. Quality content is original and relevant to your industry and audience. Today, we’ll cover creating high-quality content for 2019.

Content Marketing 101: Creating High-Quality Content for 2019

After researching this topic around the web (and finding informative articles like this one) I’ve compiled the following comprehensive guide to creating high-quality content, separated into subheadings for easier reading.

Post original content.

Utilize brainstorming to come up with new ideas. Beneficial brainstorming steps are to set a time, write ideas down, focus on your topics, and then reorganize them into new combinations of ideas. “Free-writing” is a brainstorming process that includes these steps. You set a timer for a short period of time, decide on a general topic, and then keep your pen, pencil, or fingers on your keyboard moving until the timer is done (with no interruptions or breaks). After this exercise, you’ll have ideas to interact with and draw from for content creation.

Have your content be created by people instead of populated by bots. Bots can helpful for website interaction but are not as effective in producing original content. In addition, Google and its SEO ranking processes have the potential to pick up on whether your content is new and original or mass-produced by computer programs.

Create content that people can find.

Add alt tags to your images so they show up in search results. This boosts the keywords in your content and helps people find it.

Include links to other sites’ content to build your links. While internal links improve interaction on your own website, external backlinks can bring new traffic to your site. External backlinks are links from other sites that lead to your page.

Create readable content.

Utilize “top-down” writing organization. This means to start with your main point and then further support it with examples, evidence, and information. You can use this principle from the overall organization of your piece to even specific paragraphs and sentences.

Bullet points and numbered lists can be your readers’ best friend. Separating information into lists help readers with a shorter attention span (or less time to read) to easily scan and remember your content.

Similarly, use headers to separate information into manageable pieces that are easy to digest. This allows readers to track the information you’re presenting clearly.

Check your grammar and spelling. This is especially important because typos decrease the credibility of you and your company. Paying attention to small details, like the correct use of “then” vs “than,” “effect” vs “affect,” and the correct usage of “you’re” and “your” can greatly improve the results of your writing.

Pay attention to style. Generally, use active voice in your writing (versus using passive voice). In passive voice, the subject receives an action. However, when using active voice, the subject performs the action. This creates engaging sentences that pack a punch.

During your creation process, write a first draft and then edit it. This step works for blogs, video scripts, and even social media captions. Occasionally, it is helpful to let your written content sit a few hours or days before going through and editing again. This allows both you and the content some time to steep. To help with the editing process, read your writing out loud. This helps you catch clunky sentences and unnecessary tangents.

Create reliable content to build credibility.

To create a trustworthy content presence, have no hidden agendas. Be transparent with what the purpose of your content is, and don’t try to make every blog post or video solely a marketing pitch. Including references to your company is appropriate, but you don’t need to overdo it. Your content marketing purpose is to engage, inform, and connect with leads.

Researched information is necessary when creating content. Even if you have a lot of prior knowledge on a topic, see what other experts are saying. Combine your knowledge with others to share the best information with your consumers. By sharing both your knowledge and other’s knowledge (and how they intersect or differ), you can share ideas that are informative and innovative.

Consistency builds trust with your audience. This means that it’s helpful to have an editorial calendar and a posting schedule for your content. When you talk often with your audience, their trust and interest will build.

Create content that the consumers can understand.

To make content that your consumers can understand you need to have a relationship with them. This means you should get to know your audience through interactions and analytics. Once you have information about your people, you can craft content that they will relate to.

Creating understandable content necessitates talking in your consumer’s language. Using your industry’s terms and conversational style helps connect with them.

Keep an outward focus as you create your content. Focus on your ideal audience’s wants, needs, interests, and preferences. This blog post covers advertising mistakes and how to avoid them. Refer to the section about a “me-focused message” to learn more about focusing on your audience instead of yourself.

To add to understanding, utilize different content forms for different purposes. Videos, blogs, pictures, podcasts, and infographics all have different strengths. Review what you want to convey in your content and choose a content form that works well with your message.

Post engaging content to interact with your audience.

Include a clear call to action in your content. Giving viewers options and instructions for ways to interact with you further increases the chance that they will. Clearly stating what they can do after consuming your content can be done through buttons, text, or forms.

In addition to a call to action, offer an invitation to share. Your high-quality content is helpful so they will want to share it with their own audience. Invite them to do so.

Focusing on subtopics in your niche provides engaging content for your audience. Specific and detailed topics leads interesting content that your audience’s attention will be engaged with.

All these steps will lead to SEO optimized content.

High-quality content creation will help with your overall online presence. The previous tips covered all end up positively influencing your search engine rankings. In addition, there are a few more SEO-driven steps to take in order to really maximize your content creation.

Remember to include a short and descriptive meta description. This helps organize your pages and improves search results. Abiding by the description length limit is important for this to work well.

While working on written content, check to make sure you include keywords in your subheadings. Subheadings with keywords not only make it easier for readers to follow your thoughts (as stated above), but they also organically add to the keywords included in your content.

In blog posts and website pages, include links to other pages on your own site. This will keep visitors interacting with your content on your site. Generally, customers consume at least 10 pieces of content before making buying decisions or further action. Linking to other high-quality content on your site allows visitors easy action to further content for their decision making process.

As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to RedMoxy to further discuss marketing, SEO, and website development. We’d love to talk with you!